The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  I lived at Sandchurch, tutored by Tom, and under his informal guardianship, until the autumn of 1838. My former school-fellows, including Phoebus Daunt, were preparing to leave Eton for the Varsity, and I too wished to continue my studies at some suitable seat of learning. Thus it was that, at Tom’s suggestion, I went to Heidelberg, where I enrolled at the University to take a number of classes, and indulged myself to the full in the pursuit of my many interests. My intellectual ambitions had been frustrated by having had to leave school prematurely, thus forfeiting the chance of proceeding to Cambridge and a Fellowship there; and so, though I did not intend to take a degree, I determined to use the time as well as I could.

  I attended lectures and read like a perfect fiend, by day and by night: philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, rhetoric, logic, cosmology – I fairly guzzled them down, like a man dying of thirst. Then I would run furiously back to the favourite subjects of my early youth – the old alchemical texts, the Rosicrucian teachings, and the ancient Greek Mysteries – and, through one of the Professors at the University, I imbibed a new passion for the archaeology of the ancient seats of civilization, Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea. Then I would be eager to search out paintings by the old German Masters in lonely forest-wrapped castles, or would travel on a whim all over the region to hear some local virtuoso play Buxtehude on an early eighteenth-century organ, or a village choir singing old German hymns in a white-painted country church. I would haunt the bookshops of the old German towns, unearthing glowing rarities – prayer-books, missals, illuminated manuscripts from the court of Burgundy, and other bibliographical treasures of which I had knowledge but, until now, had never seen. For I was mad to see, to hear, to know!

  That was my golden time (Phoebus Daunt is welcome to his): in particular, the bliss of tracing the track of the Philosophenweg* with an armful of books on a bright summer’s morning; to find my private spot high above the Neckar, from where I could gaze down on the Heiliggeist Church and the Old Bridge through the clear new air; and then to lie back on soft grass, the sun seeping through the branches, with my books and my dreams, with swallows wheeling against clouds that might have been painted by Poussin, an infinity of blue above me.

  *[‘Dust and shadow’. Ed.]

  †[Edward Craven Hawtrey (1789–1862), who had succeeded the infamous flogger Dr Keate as Head Master only two years earlier. He was, as Glyver notes, a great bibliophile himself and was a member of the premier association for bibliographical scholars, the Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

  *[The Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

  *[Meaning one huge event piled on another, alluding to the giants, the Aloadae, in Greek mythology who attempted to reach the abode of the gods by placing Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, two peaks in Thessaly (Odyssey, XI, 315). The narrator is doubtless alluding to Laertes’ words on the death of Ophelia: ‘Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead / Till of this flat a mountain you have made / To o’ertop old Pelion’ (Hamlet, V.i.247). Ed.]

  *[The famous ‘Philosopher’s Path’ that leads up to the northern bank of the Neckar. Ed.]

  13

  Omnia mutantur*

  A man of knowledge increaseth strength, says the proverb;† and this saying I proved to be true, as I daily enlarged my store of understanding in the subjects to which I applied myself. I experienced a dizzying feeling of expanding power in my mental and physical capabilities, until I could conceive of no subject too abstruse for my apprehension to grasp, and no task too great for my ability to accomplish.

  And yet I suffered continually from bouts of gnawing rage, which often threatened to undermine this swelling self-confidence. A fearful black humour would descend upon me without warning, even on the brightest of days, when the world about me was alive with life and hope. And then I would shut out the light, and pace about my room like a caged beast, for hours on end, eaten up by only one thought.

  How would I be revenged? I turned the question over and over in my mind, imagining the ways in which Phoebus Daunt might be made to feel what I had felt, and envisioning the means by which his hopes could be destroyed. He was at Cambridge now, as I knew from Le Grice, both having taken their places at King’s College. Daunt, as expected, had secured the Newcastle, and was received at King’s with that expectation that naturally surrounds the holder of such a prize. Certainly he continued to display real ability in his studies, but again with that tendency to indiscipline that would have aroused the severe displeasure of his meticulous father. The Rector’s old friend, Dr Passingham of Trinity, did his best to maintain a paternalistic eye on the young man’s doings and would, from time to time, communicate discreet pastoral reports on his progress back to Northamptonshire. It was not long before such reports became troublesome to Dr Daunt.

  From Le Grice, I received accounts of a number of incidents witnessed by him that testified to a distinct shabbiness of character, and which luridly corroborated the more sober notes of concern that flowed, with increasing frequency, between the Master’s Lodge at Trinity and Evenwood Rectory.

  The first might, perhaps, be seen as an undergraduate prank (though it was not so construed by his father when it was reported to him). On being good-humouredly reprimanded by the Dean of the College for some trivial misdemeanour, young Daunt placed a game hamper before that gentleman’s door, directed to him ‘With Mr Daunt’s compliments’. When opened, the hamper was found to contain a dead cat, with an escort of five skinned rats. On being arraigned and questioned, Daunt coolly maintained his innocence, arguing that he would hardly have affixed his own name to the hamper had he been the culprit. And so he was released with due apology.

  The second incident is more substantial, with respect to Daunt’s developing character.

  He had been invited to a dinner given by the Provost. At the head of the table, Dr Okes* sat in earnest discussion with the College’s Visitor, Bishop Kaye, whilst on either side a dozen or so men conversed at their ease. Daunt, one of three freshmen present, found himself sitting next to Le Grice; on the other side of the table sat a senior Fellow of the College, Dr George Maxton, a gentlemen well advanced in years and of much-impaired hearing.

  Towards the conclusion of the meal, Daunt leaned forward and, with a fixed smile, spoke to this venerable figure.

  ‘Well, Dr Maxton, and how are you enjoying yourself?’

  The good gentleman, seeing himself addressed, but hearing nothing above the surrounding chatter, merely smiled back and nodded.

  ‘You think it a pretty fair spread, do you, you old fool?’ Another nod.

  Daunt continued, still smiling.

  ‘The oysters were barely tolerable, the hock execrable, the conversation tiresome, and yet you have found it all perfectly to your taste. What a rattlepate you are.’

  Daunt persisted in this impertinent and insulting vein for some minutes, making the most uncomplimentary remarks to the poor deaf gentleman across the table as though he were discoursing on the most common topics. All the while, Dr Maxton, unaware of what was really being said to him, received the young man’s impudence with mute gestures of touching courtesy; and still Daunt continued to derogate his fellow guest, smiling as he did so. This, as Le Grice observed, was behaviour most unbecoming to a gentleman.

  There were other – indeed, numerous – instances of such behaviour during Daunt’s time at the Varsity, all of them displaying an innate viciousness and egotism. I eagerly read Le Grice’s reports, which formed the beginnings of what was to become an extensive repository of information concerning the history and character of Phoebus Daunt.

  I would be revenged on him. This became an article of faith with me. But I must first come to know him as I knew myself: his family, his friends and acquaintances, his places of resort – all the externalities of his life; and then the internal impulsions: his hopes and fears, his uncertainties and desires, his ambitions, and all the secret corners of his heart. Only when the subject of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt had been completely mastered would I know where the blow should fall
that would bring catastrophe upon him. For the moment, I must bide my time, until I returned to England, to begin setting my plans in motion.

  At Evenwood, Dr Daunt’s great work on the Duport Library was drawing to its triumphant close after nearly eight years’ labour. It had become a famous enterprise, with articles on its progress appearing regularly in the periodical press, and the publication of the final catalogue, with its attendant notes and commentaries, was eagerly awaited by the community of scholars and collectors, both in England and on the Continent. The Rector had written and received hundreds of letters during the course of his work, to the extent that Lord Tansor had agreed to hire an amanuensis to assist him in the completion of the great task. His own private secretary, Mr Paul Carteret, had also been seconded to help the Rector when required; and so, aided by this little team, and driven daily by his own unbounded eagerness and energy, the end was now in sight.

  Mr Carteret’s assistance had proved invaluable, especially his extensive knowledge of the Duport family, of which he was himself a member. His familiarity with the family papers, stored in the Muniments Room at Evenwood, enabled Dr Daunt to establish where, when, and from whom the 23rd Baron Tansor had purchased particular items, as well as the provenance of some of the books in the collection that had been acquired in earlier times. To Mr Carteret was also delegated the important and demanding task of listing and describing the manuscript holdings, which were a particular interest of his.

  Lord Tansor had wanted a superior kind of inventory of his goods; but he was not so much the Philistine that he did not feel satisfied by the true nature of his asset, nor take pride in what had been laid down by his grandfather for the benefit of posterity. Its material value proved, in the end, difficult to calculate, except that it was almost beyond price; but its worth in other terms had been indubitably confirmed by Dr Daunt’s work, and it now stood to the world as one of the most important collections of its kind in Europe. For this confirmation alone, and the great renown thrown on his name by the publication of the catalogue, Lord Tansor was well pleased.

  The intellectual and artistic glories of the Duport Collection had come to him from his grandfather through his father. To whom would they now pass? How could they be transmitted, intact, to the next generation, and to the next, and to their heirs and descendants, and thus become a living symbol of the continuity that his soul craved? For still no heir had been vouchsafed to his union with the second Lady Tansor. In his Lordship’s mind, the completion of Dr Daunt’s work merely served to underscore his precarious dynastic position. His wife was now a poor stick of a woman, who meekly followed her husband around, in town and country, forlorn and ineffectual. There was, it seemed, no hope.

  It was just at this time that Lord Tansor – egged on, I suspect, by his relative, Mrs Daunt – began to lavish signs of especial favour on the Rector’s son. What follows is based on information I obtained some years after the events described.

  During the Long Vacation of 1839, Lord Tansor began to express the opinion that it would be good for his Rector’s son if he ‘ran around a little’, by which his Lordship meant to imply that a period of harmless leisure would not go amiss, even for so accomplished a scholar. He suggested that a few weeks spent at his house in Park-lane, whither he was himself about to repair with Lady Tansor, would be productive of useful amusement for the young man. The young man’s step-mamma fairly purred with delight to hear Lord Tansor expatiating so enthusiastically on what might be done for her step-son by way of a social education.

  As to his future, once his time at the Varsity was over, the young man himself expressed a certain open-mindedness on the subject, which, doubtless, alarmed his father, but which may not have been displeasing to Lord Tansor, whose nods of tacit approval as the lad held forth on the various possibilities that might lie before him after taking his degree – none of which involved ordination, and one of which, a career in letters, went completely against his father’s inclinations – were observed and inwardly deplored by the helpless Rector.

  That summer, Phoebus Daunt duly ‘ran around a little’ under the watchful eye of Lord Tansor. The debauchery was not excessive. A succession of tedious dinners in Park-lane, at which Cabinet ministers, political journalists of the more serious persuasion, distinguished ecclesiastics, military and naval magnates, and other public men, predominated; for light relief, an afternoon concert in the Park, or an expedition to the races (which he particularly enjoyed). Then to Cowes for some sailing and a round of dull parties. Lord Tansor would hold the flat of his right hand out stiffly, fingers and thumb closed tight together, arm bent at the elbow, just behind the boy’s back, as he introduced him. ‘Phoebus, my boy,’ – he had taken to calling him ‘my boy’ —‘this is Lord Cotterstock, my neighbour. He would like to meet you.’ ‘Phoebus, my boy, have you made the acquaintance yet of Mrs Gough-Palmer, wife of the Ambassador?’ ‘The Prime Minister will be down tomorrow, my boy, and I should like you to meet him.’ And Phoebus would meet them, and charm them, and generally reflect the rays of Lord Tansor’s good opinion of him like a mirror until everyone was convinced that he was the very best fellow alive.

  And so it went on, for the rest of the vacation. On his return to Evenwood in September, he seemed quite the man about town: a little taller, with a gloss and a swagger about his manner that he had completely lacked as a schoolboy only a short time before. There was now a gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Tansor had sent him off to his tailor and hatter, and his step-mamma quite caught her breath at the sight of the elegantly clad figure – in bright-blue frock-coat, checked trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous waistcoat, together with incipient Dundreary whiskers – that descended from his Lordship’s coach.

  From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale his patron with an account of how he had comported himself during the previous term. It was gratifying to his Lordship to hear how well the boy was regarded by his tutors, and what a great mark he was making on the University. A Fellowship surely beckoned, he told Uncle Tansor, though, speaking for himself, he did not feel that such a course quite accorded with his talents. Lord Tansor concurred. He had little time for University men in general, and would prefer to see the lad make his way in the great world of the metropolis. The lad himself could only agree.

  Of the making of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt there seemed to be no end. With each passing month, Lord Tansor devised new ways to raise the young man up in the world, losing no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and to put him in the way of meeting people who, like Lord Tansor himself, mattered.

  On the last day of December 1840, in the midst of his final year at the University, Daunt attained his majority, and his Lordship saw fit to arrange a dinner party in his honour. It was a most dazzling affair. The dinner itself consisted of soups and fish, six entrées, turtle heads, roasts, capons, poulards and turkeys, pigeons and snipes, garnishes of truffles, mushrooms, crawfish and American asparagus; desserts and ices; even several bottles of the 1784 claret laid down by Lord Tansor’s father; all attended by footmen and waiters brought in especially – to the consternation of the existing domestic staff – to dispense service à la française.

  The guests, some thirty or so in number, had included, for the principal guest’s benefit, several literary figures; for Lord Tansor, a little against an innate prejudice towards the profession of writing, had been impressed by the dedication to literature that the young man was beginning to display. He would often come across the lad tucked away in a corner of the Library (in which he seemed to pass a great deal of his time when he was home), in rapt perusal of some volume or other. On several occasions he had even found him absorbed in one of Mr Southey’s turgid epics, and it would amaze Lord Tansor, on returning to the same spot an hour later, to discover the young man still engrossed – it being unaccountable to his Lordship that so much time and attention could be devoted to s
omething so unutterably tedious. (He had once ventured to look into a volume of the Laureate’s,* and had sensibly determined never to do so again.) But there it was. Further, the boy had displayed some talent of his own in this department, having had a simpering ode in the style of Gray published in the Eton College Chronicle, and another in the Stamford Mercury. Lord Tansor was no judge, of course, but he thought that these poetic ambitions might be encouraged, as being both harmless and, if successful, conducive to a new kind of respect devolving upon him as the young genius’s patron.

  So up they had trotted to Evenwood, at Lord Tansor’s summons: Mr Horne, Mr Montgomery, Mr de Vere, and Mr Heraud,† and a few others of their ilk. They were not, it must be admitted, first-division talents; but Lord Tansor had been much satisfied, both by their presence and by their expressions of encouragement, when Master Phoebus was persuaded to bring out one or two of his own effusions for their perusal. The literary gentlemen appeared to think that the young man had the mind and ear – indeed, the vocation – of the born bard, which gratifyingly confirmed Lord Tansor’s view that he had been right to allow the young man his head in respect of a possible career. The author himself was also flattered by the kind attentions of Mr Henry Drago,* the distinguished reviewer and leading contributor to Eraser’s and the Quarterly, who gave him his card and offered to act on his behalf to find a publisher for his poems. Two weeks later, a letter came from this gentleman to say that Mr Moxon,† a particular friend of his, had been so taken by the verses that the critic had placed before him that he had expressed an urgent wish to meet the young genius as soon as may be, with a view to a publishing proposal.